For years, it has been difficult for scientists to definitively tie the warming atmosphere to any single episode

Published Aug 19, 2018 at 10:14 AM

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In this Aug. 5, 2018, file photo, people cool off in an urban beach at Madrid Rio park in Madrid. Hot air from Africa brought a heat wave to Europe, which prompted health warnings about Sahara Desert dust and exceptionally high temperatures of 117 degrees Fahrenheit in Spain and Portugal.

When the heat waves, droughts, wildfires and deluges come — as they seem to with increasing regularity these days — the question inevitably arises: Did climate change play a role?

The answer scientists gave for years was that greenhouse gases created by humans likely contributed to extreme weather, but it was hard to definitively tie the warming atmosphere to any single episode. But that cautious approach is changing, NBC News reported. Now, scientists say that they will increasingly be able to link extreme weather events to human-caused global warming.

So when a heat wave beset Northern Europe early this summer, bringing temperatures in Scandinavia into the 90s, researchers operating under the name World Weather Attribution whipped together a series of computer simulations. Within three days, the scientists issued a finding that the hot spell had been made at least twice as likely because of human-driven climate change.

In less frequent instances, scientists taking more time have reached even bolder conclusions — finding that some extreme events would not have happened at all in a pre-industrial era, when Earth's atmosphere had not been pumped full of carbon dioxide.

The trend promises to become even more pronounced in the coming years, because national weather agencies in countries like Germany and Australia, and the weather service for the European Union, expect to begin issuing regular findings on whether unusual weather events grew out of climate change.